Top posting may be the devil, but it's hard to do otherwise when I'm responding via the Gmail app on an iPod Touch. ;-) But I'm on my laptop now.
Graydon: > ... So I'd be wildly disinclined to suppose that just because you're on OS X > you're safe. ... I don't make such inappropriate assumptions, Graydon. There are certainly threats out there. That's why Apple maintains a very very proactive group constantly monitoring all the reports such as you, and steve, posted, actively working on a constant basis to block such threats. I know them, the actual people, as I used to work with them. Remember that I worked at Apple in all kinds of capacities, contributing to all kinds of projects because of my roles in developer technical support and development tools groups, for 13 years. And that for six years now, a good half to three quarters of my income has come from operating a business as a Mac OS X computer consultant. However, all of the citations you posted, and steve posted, are not citations of actual incidents. They are reports of professional investigators finding malware, not actual incidents of malware affecting users. I have seen other issues like Larry's crop up from time to time ... not the specific one he's experiencing ... and in every case they had nothing to do with malware or virus attacks on the system. In every case they had to do with corrupted or badly formed application/system preferences. Usually due to either simple, straightforward bugs or installation process glitches. Helping out dozens and dozens of people since Mac OS X shipped in 2001, I have yet to see an actual incident or read a credible report of the viruses or malware out there for Mac OS X actually affecting a users' system. My friends at the three Apple Retail Stores nearby, who staff the Genius Bars, similarly tell me that they hear rumors of a virus or bug many many times when someone comes in with a system that isn't working right, and yet they haven't found one yet: all of the incidents were easily resolved to be simple, straightforward software or hardware problems. So, given that Larry most recently reported that Preview.app prints without error, I contend that the problem in his case is yet another case of "installer or preferences gone awry" with the Adobe Reader application install. I've seen this sort of thing over and over again. Larry, here's a test to try: - Put a copy of PDF documents known to fail on printing into the /Users/Shared directory. - Create a new user account and login to it. - Try printing one with Preview just as a control. - Open the same one with Adobe Reader and try printing. If they fail to print with Adobe Reader, the problem is in the base installation of Adobe Reader. If they print properly, the problem is something wrong in the account preferences of your usual working account. -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
